The only use for the clocker attribute and the AstVar::isUsedClock that
is actually necessary today for correctness is to mark top level inputs
of --lib-create blocks as being (or driving) a clock signal. Correctness
of --lib-create (and hence hierarchical blocks) actually used to depend
on having the right optimizations eliminate intermediate clocks (e.g.:
V3Gate), when the top level port was not used directly in a sensitivity
list, or marking top level signals manually via --clk or the clocker
attribute. However V3Sched::partition already needs to trace through the
logic to figure out what signals might drive a sensitivity list, so it
can very easily mark all top level inputs as such.
In this patch we remove the AstVar::attrClocker and AstVar::isUsedClock
attributes, and replace them with AstVar::isPrimaryClock, automatically
set by V3Sched::partition. This eliminates all need for manual
annotation so we are deprecating the --clk/--no-clk options and the
clocker/no_clocker attributes.
This also eliminates the opportunity for any further mis-optimization
similar to #6453.
Regarding the other uses of the removed AstVar attributes:
- As of 5.000, initial edges are triggered via a separate mechanism
applied in V3Sched, so the use in V3EmitCFunc.cpp is redundant
- Also as of 5.000, we can handle arbitrary sensitivity expressions, so
the restriction on eliminating clock signals in V3Gate is unnecessary
- Since the recent change when Dfg is applied after V3Scope, it does
perform the equivalent of GateClkDecomp, so we can delete that pass.
Combined Dfg variable elimination into the regularization pass that runs
before converting back to Ast. This avoids introducing some unnecessary
temporaries.
Added replacing of variables with constants in the Ast if after the
Dfg passes they are known to be constants. This is only done in final
scoped Dfg application.
Avoid introducing temporaries for common sub-expressions that are
cheaper to re-compute than store in a temporary variable.
Enable removal of redundant unpacked array variables.
Also fixes#6394 as this patch involved changes to that code.
Added a mini type system for Dfg using DfgDataType to replace Dfg's use
of AstNodeDType. This is much more restricted and represents only the
types Dfg can handle in a canonical form. This will be needed when
adding more support for unpacked arrays and maybe unpacked structs one
day.
Also added an internal type checker for DfgGraphs which encodes all the
assumptions the code makes about type relationships in the graph. Run
this in a few places with --debug-check. Fix resulting fallout.
Large scale refactoring to simplify some of the more obtuse internals of
DFG. Remove multiple redundant internal APIs, simplify representation of
variables, fix potential unsoundness in circular decomposition. No
functional change intended.
This patch adds DfgLogic, which is a vertex that represents a whole,
arbitrarily complex combinational AstAlways or AstAssignW in the
DfgGraph.
Implementing this requires computing the variables live at entry to the
AstAlways (variables read by the block), so there is a new
ControlFlowGraph data structure and a classical data-flow analysis based
live variable analysis to do that at the variable level (as opposed to
bit/element level).
The actual CFG construction and live variable analysis is best effort,
and might fail for currently unhandled constructs or data types. This
can be extended later.
V3DfgAstToDfg is changed to convert the Ast into an initial DfgGraph
containing only DfgLogic, DfgVertexSplice and DfgVertexVar vertices.
The DfgLogic are then subsequently synthesized into primitive operations
by the new V3DfgSynthesize pass, which is a combination of the old
V3DfgAstToDfg conversion and new code to handle AstAlways blocks with
complex flow control.
V3DfgSynthesize by default will synthesize roughly the same constructs
as V3DfgAstToDfg used to handle before, plus any logic that is part of a
combinational cycle within the DfgGraph. This enables breaking up these
cycles, for which there are extensions to V3DfgBreakCycles in this patch
as well. V3DfgSynthesize will then delete all non synthesized or non
synthesizable DfgLogic vertices and the rest of the Dfg pipeline is
identical, with minor changes to adjust for the changed representation.
Because with this change we can now eliminate many more UNOPTFLAT, DFG
has been disabled in all the tests that specifically target testing the
scheduling and reporting of circular combinational logic.
SystemC variables are fairly special (they can only be assigned to/from,
but not otherwise participate in expressions), which complicates some
DFG code. These variables only ever appear as port on the top level
wrapper, so excluding them from DFG does not make us loose any
optimizations, but simplifies internals.
Previously DFG was limited to having a Sel, or an ArraySel potentially
under a Concat on the LHS of combinational assignments. Other forms or
combinations were not representable in the graph.
This adds support for arbitrary combinations of the above by
combining DfgSplicePacked and DfgSpliceArray vertices introduced in
#6176. In particular, Sel(ArraySel(VarRef,_),_) enables a lot more code
to be represented in DFG.
This is mostly a refactoring, but also enables handling some more
UNOPTFLAT, when the variable is only partially assigned in the cycle.
Previously the way partial assignments to variables were handled were
through the DfgVerexVar types themselves, which kept track of all
drivers. This has been replaced by DfgVertexSplice (which always drives
a DfgVeretexVar), and all DfgVertexVar now only have a single source,
either a DfgVertexSplice, if partially assigned, or an arbitrary
DfgVertex when updated as a whole.
This functionality used to be distributed in the removeVars pass and the
final dfgToAst conversion. Instead added a new 'regularize' pass to
convert DFGs into forms that can be trivially converted back to Ast, and
a new 'eliminateVars' pass to remove/repalce redundant variables. This
simplifies dfgToAst significantly and makes the code a bit easier to
follow.
The new 'regularize' pass will ensure that every sub-expression with
multiple uses is assigned to a temporary (unless it's a trivial memory
reference or constant), and will also eliminate or replace redundant
variables. Overall it is a performance neutral change but it does
enable some later improvements which required the graph to be in this
form, and this also happens to be the form required for the dfgToAst
conversion.
Geza Lore
Bartłomiej Chmiel
Wilson Snyder